Sometimes this sexual frustration can lead to genius
innovation; their original intent may have been to simply get them their first
girlfriend or girlfriend experience ala Weird Science, and not necessarily to
help mankind, but in the end they wound up creating something that could
ultimately cure cancer or help us download our porn faster.
And this is exactly the premise of Alex Garland’s Ex
Machina. Well, not exactly. Machina is about Caleb, a young programmer who wins
a contest to spend an entire week on the giant estate of his company’s CEO and
creator Nathan. Nathan is the founder of the world’s biggest search engine
Bluebook and he believes that he has created the world’s first truly AI being
in Ava. So while Caleb is visiting his home, Nathan decides to run his Turing
test on him; it’s a test to see if a man can interact with a machine or a computer
and be fooled into thinking that it’s actually human.
Nathan himself comes across as this narcissistic, eccentric,
and borderline drunk genius who’s quite proud of his invention but he tries to
present himself as just another guy to the socially awkward Caleb. Caleb is an
only child whose parents died when he was a teenager and because of his lack of
social skills, he’s also a loner who has a hard time finding a girlfriend. So
as you can imagine, the second he sees Nathan’s invention Ava, he’s completely
enamored.
Ava, played by Alicia Vikander, is a strikingly beautiful robot
whose curiosity, innocence, and intelligence instantly draws Caleb to her. And
the second she learns more about Caleb and what makes him tick, she appears to
fall in love with him as well.
What makes this story interesting is that Ava apparently
hates Nathan and whenever she feels as though Caleb and her are alone, she
tries to convince him that Nathan is an evil manipulator who cannot be trusted.
But the plot thickens when Nathan reminds Caleb that Ava is machine who: A
might actually like him B. might be pretending to like him to help her pass the
test or C. might be pretending to like him because she has her own agenda.
What’s great about this film is that there appears to be
plenty of evidence to support each theory and the more you find out about
Nathan, the stranger he appears.
This movie is a dark, funny, and scary look into the future
as it shows how man’s arrogance might ultimately be his downfall. Nathan sums
it up best when he warns Caleb that “one day AI will look upon us humans as we now
do the fossils of dinosaurs and their forgotten era”; I’m paraphrasing of
course.
Garland does an awesome job of blending style and score to
create a mood of uneasiness in the futuristic and sterile home of Nathan. You
can’t help but feel like an unwanted alien in his home who might be turned on
at any second. And this is why you somewhat connect with Caleb who begins to
question his very own existence towards the end of the movie. Sadly it’s movies like these that get overlooked by the Academy when it comes time to hand out awards because this is easily one of the best and most original films I have seen in a while. I rate this movie as TIGHT and I suggest that you pop in. Oh and do yourself a favor and rock out to the Savages during the credits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz-JCRm-Inw
http://onlyfreshness.blogspot.com/2013/02/sxsw-punk-savages-and-skaters.html
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